December 5, 2015

THE QUICKENING

by Mari
Biella

200
pages, Amazon Digital Services

Review
by Bill Kirton

Susan
Hill is quoted as the most accomplished of our contemporary writers of ghost
stories. She’s certainly an excellent writer but, for me, her work isn’t
remotely scary or disturbing. The Woman
in Black is touted as a masterpiece of the genre and yet I found it
predictable and devoid of the chills everyone seems to ascribe to it. This no
doubt says more about me than about Ms Hill, and her fans will probably not
even have bothered reading this far in my review. And, even if they have,
they’ll consider me unqualified to comment on anything in the genre.

But
it’s the fact that others have compared Mari Biella’s The Quickening with Ms Hill’s works that provokes my remarks
because to me there seems to be a significant difference between the approach of
the two writers and the impact of their stories. Ms Biella makes no assumptions
about the reader’s susceptibilities. All aspects of her story, the rational and
the immanent, are given equal weight. Her characters and their relationships
are beautifully, carefully drawn and delineated. She knows them so well and
follows their shifts of mood and their changing perceptions with the lightest and
yet surest of touches. Her writing is measured, thoughtful. She chooses the
words she puts into her first person narrator’s mouth with care and skilfully
reproduces the tone and rhythms of the late Victorian era in which the events
take place. Most of all, her book’s uniqueness stems from the fact that she
manages to close the gap between the rational and the supernatural which
sceptics like myself find so difficult to negotiate.

The
vast, impossible distance between the quick and the dead is, if not overcome,
at least brought into question. The rational-minded Lawrence Fairweather
despairs at his wife’s persistent refusal to accept the loss of their younger
daughter. His wish is to move on from the tragedy but the child’s continued
‘presence’ for his wife and their other daughter closes all avenues. It sits at
the centre of the narrative, determining its pathways, insinuating itself into
everything, challenging him.

His
account of the events begins in apprehension. Its slow burn intensifies as the
story builds and, as he relates details of changes in his wife, we become aware
of subtle psychological changes in himself. Simultaneously, in the broader
context, the opposing forces of the real and the imagined begin, barely
perceptibly, to overlap as seemingly irreconcilable elements gradually merge
and fuse.

The
result is a shiver which is qualitatively distinct from that produced by more
conventional hauntings. Here, the external trappings of the story – its historical
period, geographical location, oppressive mood and surroundings – follow those
conventions, but the hauntings are internal, of the mind. They occupy the same
space as reason. And, even to a sceptic like myself, they seem to be equally
valid.

This is an excellent work, a
pleasure to read. Ms Biella makes the ghostly accessible, possible, legitimate.